Technically a public restaurant, Rao’s is one step removed from a private supper club as regulars of this East Harlem legend have had standing reservations for 35 years on a weekly or monthly basis. The infamously hard-to-get into Italian restaurant in New York has been catering to a cast of rotating movie stars, politicians, and even mobsters for 117 years, where scoring a table will immediately grant you high-roller status. Co-owner Frankie Pellegrino goes by the nickname of Frankie No for his usual reply when asked for a seat at his tiny 10-table establishment, which is considered the hardest place in America to secure a reservation.
The Southern Neapolitan cuisine- including that famous red sauce you can buy most everywhere- is highly regarded for classics such as meatballs and lemon chicken which have led Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and other notable New Yorkers uptown to sample. A second location opened at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in 2006 where chef Nicole Grimes, a James Beard Award semi-finalist, manned the kitchen. She has recently migrated to Rao’s third and newest outpost in Los Angeles which opened two weeks ago, located in the old Hollywood Canteen. The indoor and outdoor seating accommodates 95, and is larger than the original New York space yet much smaller and more intimate than Las Vegas. LA’s storied location in Hollywood- where all the movie studios were back in the day- plus the original menu sprinkled with some new dishes, is what makes Pellegrino optimistic about carving out LA’s own collection of regulars who will make the weekly trek from the Westside for their standing reservations. www.raos.com
